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Pragmatics in Bakuli: A Linguistic Ethnographer’s Notes from the Neighborhood
Nico Nassenstein Department of Anthropology and African Studies JGU Mainz [email protected]
Abstract This contribution offers insights into contemporary language practices in the Ugandan capital Kampala where Rwandans and Burundians, Congolese traders, refugees and travelers meet and interact. Speakers in Bakuli, a vibrant neighborhood of the Ugandan capital, do not seem to categorize themselves according to geolinguistic lines of national belonging, instead language appears to be fluid and permeable. Based on an experience- based and reflection-based approach pursuing a linguistic ethnography, my preliminary contribution compares processes of “(un)doing” language(s) in the context of colonial nation-building with recent contexts of conflict migration. Central questions are: Which strategies do specifically contemporary migrants from Rwanda and Burundi employ to subvert and play with the differences between both languages and break language boundaries? How do they create a new language-in-between that includes emblematic features of both Kinyarwanda and Kirundi, making a clear indication of nationality and national categorization therefore impossible? In the framework of a “pragmatics of place”, this ethnographic note intends to show how concepts of place/space contribute to a change in meaning of linguistic varieties and their speakers’ (internal) selfing strategies, as well as to a rearrangement of external categorizations of speakers, ethnic groups and geolinguistic belonging. Keywords: pragmatics of place, fluidity, language boundaries, linguistic ethnography, Kinyarwanda-Kirundi
1. Introduction: On space, place and the context of language use in Uganda Bakuli is a lively neighborhood in Kampala, the Ugandan capital, where refugees, traders (selling arms, trucks, conflict minerals, and much more) and travelers from all across East and Central Africa meet, negotiate, visit strip clubs, connect to other bus lines to Nairobi (Kenya), Goma (DR Congo), or to Bujumbura (Burundi) and Kigali (Rwanda), interact with sex workers or share a drink. Most interactions around these spots are commonly held in either Kinyarwanda or Kirundi, two strikingly similar and mutually intelligible Bantu languages1 from Rwanda and Burundi, where most refugees and vendors originate
1 I refer to Kinyarwanda and Kirundi here (and in the following) as “languages” in order to bring the reader closer to the geographical and linguistic background of this study,
Journal of Postcolonial Linguistics, 2(2020), 108–127 Pragmatics in Bakuli: A Linguistic Ethnographer’s Notes from the Neighborhood 109 from. These two Bantu languages are spoken by approximately 20 million speakers all throughout the Central African nation states of Rwanda and Burundi, as well as through parts of Eastern DR Congo and Uganda. In a more detailed historical study, I have tried to sketch the history of these two languages and the role of missionaries and of the colonial administration in their emergence and implementation over time (Nassenstein 2019). Kinyarwanda and Kirundi share a common history: The varieties used in schools nowadays both emerged out of colonial processes of choosing among closely-related dialects, which were then transformed into official or national languages. According to a Bantuist tradition in African Linguistics, the Kinyarwanda-Kirundi dialect continuum is subsumed under the letter-digit combination JD60 (based on the classification suggested by linguist Malcolm Guthrie 1967–1971 and later by Jouni Filip Maho in 2009). Among the widely acknowledged varieties, mostly the national languages Kinyarwanda and Kirundi are known and commonly listed. Some others, specifically those spoken outside of both countries, are sometimes listed, too, namely Kinyabwisha and Kinyamulenge (see Nassenstein 2018a, among others) in Eastern DR Congo and Rufumbira as spoken in southwestern Uganda (Nassenstein 2016). The fact that most traders, passengers and refugees in the Bakuli neighborhood are proficient in either Kinyarwanda or Kirundi has historical reasons due to early waves of migration from Rwanda to Uganda in the 1960s as well as in subsequent decades. In more recent times, a large number of Burundian refugees migrated to Uganda, triggered by the outbreak of violent conflict in Burundi in 2015. Congolese individuals, mostly speakers of closely-related languages, too, have been present in Uganda due to trade and also persecution, such as a larger community of Banyamulenge refugees from South Kivu province. For all these, Uganda has either been a safe haven, an attractive spot for trading or a stopover on their trip through East Africa. Also students from Rwanda often choose Ugandan universities as their preferred institutions. It is not surprising that these events, i.e. political conflict in the area and trajectories of larger groups of migrants, are a direct consequence of power inequalities whose foundations were laid in colonial times. The “pragmatics of place” of Kinyarwanda- and Kirundi-speaking individuals in a neighborhood of Uganda’s capital therefore serve as a critical reflection of colonial constructions of “imagined communities” (Anderson 1982) and how these are bound to specific places. The unboundedness of speakers in Bakuli, Kampala, reveals a conscious reconfiguration of these ideas of ethnolinguistic and geolinguistic belonging through creative practice.
clarifying the emergence of specific systems of classifying spoken practice as named and assorted languages. I do not intend to repeat processes of artefactualization/reification of colonial language-making in my paper, nor to substitute former categories with more recent ones. In the course of this work, the difficulty of dealing with hybrid registers that have emerged out of named languages will be further addressed. Recent literature on problems of fixity and fluidity of language(s) also provides helpful approaches that show how linguists are often trapped in their own categories (see, among many others, Jaspers & Madsen 2018; Sabino 2018).
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In their colonial context, these two languages, which were rather two ways of speaking of a dialect continuum than separate entities, were created, artefactualized and prescribed in grammars and dictionaries by German and Belgian authorities (from approximately 1894 to 1961/2). Until today, these languages are used in the education system of both countries and index a strong national belonging in Rwanda and Burundi, as “official languages” beneath others (French and English in Burundi; French, English and Swahili in Rwanda). Speakers who were—according to the languages they spoke in each of the German Protektorate (until 1916) and later Belgian colonies (until 1961/62)—clearly associated with either Rwanda or Burundi as users of either of these two languages, then migrated in large numbers to neighboring Uganda, often settling in (or frequenting) Bakuli, a place that already had a considerable number of Kinyarwanda-speaking and Kirundi-speaking visitors, travelers and inhabitants. In Bakuli, however, migrants often play with the indexical value of certain linguistic realizations (Kinyarwanda as “the language of Rwandans” vs. Kirundi as “the language of Burundians”) and thus modify their language with a high degree of fluidity according to their social needs: Accents are imitated, the lexicon is adapted, and Rwandans turn into Burundians, while Burundians turn into Rwandans. Linguistic accommodation (Giles & Smith 1979), convergence and divergence and language crossing (Rampton 1995) are some of the linguistic processes that could be observed in Bakuli, showing that “complex hybridic forms of communication have evolved in which pragmatic practices from different languages and ethnic groups are subtly combined” (Anchimbe & Janney 2011: 1451). These practices of undoing differences guarantee security or may improve one’s position in business transactions; “being Rwandan” vs. “being Burundian” index very complex associations. These practices of mimicry, mimesis and of fluid adaptation largely have to do with colonial place-making and constructions of belonging2, which were either too rigid in terms of speakers’ localization and portray them as static, immobile and bound to one national language or as too simplistic in terms of speakers’ multilingual repertoires omitting that they constantly expand their repertoires based on encounters, trajectories, and so on. But which role does the Bakuli neighborhood as a place of encounters play? Historically, the Ugandan capital Kampala was constructed on seven hills. The early Anglican missionaries and later the British colonial government named the newly established town after the central hill where the royal palace of the Buganda court was located, Mengo. In close proximity to Mengo lies Old Kampala Hill, which holds the vibrant neighborhood Bakuli. Its denomination is derived from the British commissioner of Uganda, Ernest James Berkeley, the successor of Colonel Colville, who presided over Kampala until 1894 and led the invasions from Buganda into Bunyoro Kingdom. Berkeley, bantuized to its present form Bakuli, was therefore one of the earliest well-
2 The “mixing” of both languages could, apart from its potential as a place-making- strategy, also be seen as register tied to a specific kind of lifestyle in which it is an advantage not to be clearly identifiable—and to fleeting interactions and encounters in a transit zone, similarly described by Blommaert (2017) as “light communities”. I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for this inspiring idea, which could indeed be possible.
Pragmatics in Bakuli: A Linguistic Ethnographer’s Notes from the Neighborhood 111 defined neighborhoods of the Ugandan capital and quickly developed into a center of commerce and to a melting pot of different cultures, languages and religions. In near vicinity to the Anglican and Catholic cathedrals erected in Kampala's early days by missionaries as well as right next to the largest mosque (today known as Gaddafi Mosque) of Uganda, Bakuli became a transfer zone of East Africans who had come to Kampala for trade (with Owino Market as one of the largest Ugandan markets well connected to Bakuli), who had emigrated from their home countries, or those who were in town for a short while before connecting to destinations beyond the city. It was not before the late 1960s or early 1970s, as stated by several interlocutors, when the first Rwandan refugees fleeing from anti-Tutsi pogroms had settled in Kampala, that Bakuli turned into a meeting place for Rwandans or Kinyarwanda-speaking Ugandans and Congolese. Both Bakuli’s strategic location not far from the city center and its composition of shops, small bars, cheap guest houses and bus companies contributed to its potential as a creative multilingual hotspot. In the following sections, I intend to show how place-specific knowledge about a Ugandan melting pot of migrants allows the “unmaking” of colonial languages, based on fieldnotes taken during ethnographic research in Bakuli. I discuss these strategies of inverting linguistic indicators of ethnic and national belonging against a framework of “postcolonial pragmatics” (Anchimbe & Janney 2011). Admittedly, also precolonial and colonial language use among speakers often enough revealed fluid and hybrid language use, while the focus here lies on mimicry as linguistic “camouflage” and alternative meaning-making processes that no longer correspond with the colonial-made differences of two constructed languages (and two groups of separate speakers). I focus on the contemporary practices of refugees and migrants, which contrast and subvert the indexical relationships of speakers bound to imagined national communities in a hybrid “third space”, Bakuli. The playful “mixing” of linguistic markers that are supposed to index either a Rwandan or a Burundian identity leads to a hybrid “in-between” register, tied to fleeting encounters in a transit zone. The fact that this register is restricted to a transit zone in Kampala also justifies the focus on place/space in this contribution. This is further achieved through the strategic use of emblematic markers from the respective other variety and is based on processes of “linguistic accommodation” (Giles & Smith 1979). Other strategies used by speakers in order to conceal or reverse their status as either Rwandans or Burundians include “code-switching”, “translanguaging” and “language crossing” as processes of mimicry (see Section 2.2). It needs to be mentioned here that a fluid understanding of language beyond demarcations of specific named languages is problematic and intrinsically reveals a difficulty, which is also recurrent in research on translanguaging (see, among others, Wolff 2018: 18): Language practices and ways of speaking can only be perceived as hybrid if one acknowledges the existence of two (or more) distinctive languages. 3 However, acknowledging the existence of two languages in terms of descriptive approaches to variation (stating that varieties are similar, mutually intelligible, share
3 I gratefully acknowledge the extensive comments by one of the anonymous reviewers, encouraging me to address these problems of definition and theory.
Nico Nassenstein 112 features, converge or diverge etc.) thus mirrors the colonial perspective on language as distinct entities grouped and classified according to colonial, racialized, ethnicized lines of demarcation—that one tends to criticize or deconstruct. As a departing theoretical (and heuristic) benchmark, historicizing the emergence of debates and discussions, we cannot do without accepting the categorization of languages, which sometimes also seems to be useful, reflecting socio-psychological realities and is somehow unavoidable, as observed by Wolff (2018). This may lead to apparent contradictions, when rooting the discussion of hybrid practice vs. demarcated languages on a foundation that presupposes named distinct languages. Recent research on African multilingualism has addressed these matters of reification and languaging in highly multilingual contexts, see for instance Cobbinah (2020) and other contributions found in Lüpke (2016, 2018), Goodchild and Weidl (2018), and Di Carlo and Good (2020).4 The urban geography of Bakuli, its historical dimension after the arrival of British missionaries and refugees’ contemporary place-making strategies during their quick encounters and brief stopovers reflect speakers’ agency in rejecting old and establishing new social and linguistic differences, depending upon economic and security-related needs—and upon Bakuli as a postcolonial linguistic marketplace. My contribution looks at language from a pragmatic angle in the broadest sense, in the sense of Anchimbe and Janney’s (2011: 1451) understanding of pragmatics from a postcolonial perspective, which “takes intermixed languages and communicative practices as its point of departure, investigating different forms, functions, and effects of hybridic discourse in postcolonial speech contexts. Rooted in the lives of postcolonial users of language whose identities, relationships, living conditions, communicative needs, and social perceptions and expectations have been shaped historically by the complex social environments into which they were born, it seeks to explain hybridic postcolonial pragmatic practices in terms that are understandable within the societies in which they occur.” This pragmatic focus here turns away from associations of speakers with “nations” (Rwanda, Burundi) as constructed projections of speakers’ discourse on a macro-level (imagined, ethnogeographical and fictitious entities) but rather intends to focus on the “places” where speakers’ interactions take place on a micro-level (places as strictly localized settings): Bus terminals, bars, strip clubs, gas stations and the busy streets of Bakuli. These places (especially the fleeting transit zones of bars and bus terminals etc., rather than private homes, schools, churches), I claim, act as sites where inscriptions and enactment of fluid linguistic strategies deconstruct rigid language boundaries that are commonly ascribed to speakers from a colonial perspective. In the Ugandan postcolony, the studied sites reveal “place discourses” that are not in line with colonial boundary- drawing between the two language varieties Kinyarwanda and Kirundi but that playfully omit boundaries between languages and thus, between speakers, and equally associations
4 I am indebted to one of the reviewers to draw my attention to some of these very useful and inspiring studies.
Pragmatics in Bakuli: A Linguistic Ethnographer’s Notes from the Neighborhood 113 with nationhood, ethnicity and spatial belonging. A “pragmatics of place”, as tentatively argued in this contribution, could potentially grasp the decolonial potential of speakers’ pragmatic strategies as processes of meaning-making in specific situational contexts. The boundary-breaking of languages in Bakuli is bound to place-specific knowledges and often appears as playful, creative, dialogic (in interaction) and to some extent, reflected in meta-discussions. These creative practices are inscribed in the neighborhood of the Ugandan capital, its history and protagonists. While the salient characteristics of language use in urban Africa5 are often analyzed from a sociolinguistic perspective (cf. McLaughlin 2009; Beck 2010; Hollington & Nassenstein 2019), the present focus on the pragmatic contexts of interactions aims at highlighting space and the “spatial turn” in linguistics, with Lefebvre's (1991) and de Certeau's (1984) focus on space as constant and ongoing re-enactment of speakers’ practices, filled with new meaning through speakers’ and mobile individuals’ movements through it. This will be tentatively discussed for the case of Bakuli (see Section 3). Data was collected during three preliminary explorative field research stays in the neighborhood Bakuli in Kampala in March and September 2017 and April 2018, each not lasting longer than a week. I am specifically indebted to my research assistants Eloi Niragira and Paulin Bose, who went out of their way in order to connect me to Rwandan and Burundian emigrants, bar owners, traders and passersby, and without whose help this first overview would not have been compiled.6
2. Theoretical approaches to language practices in Bakuli In the following, the Bakuli neighborhood as a melting pot in Kampala, Uganda, will be briefly sketched in terms of the language practices of refugees, passerbys and travelers and how the linguistic strategies they employ in their communication can be contrasted to colonial and missionary initiatives and ideologies regarding the two closely-related languages Kinyarwanda and Kirundi. First, I will introduce Bakuli’s characteristics as a
5 It deserves mentioning that not only urban spaces reflect speakers’ creativity and agency in the use of new registers and hybrid ways of speaking, see for instance Nassenstein (2018b) for rural youth language practices, Cobbinah et al. (2016) for language use in the Lower Casamance, Senegal, and Good, Di Carlo and Ojong (2019) for a more general take on rural multilingualism. 6 Moreover, I am greatly indebted to Eeva Sippola, Carsten Levisen for their patience and encouragement, and to Ella Korhonen for her careful work. I am grateful to my colleagues of the research group on “Humandifferenzierung” (human categorization) at the JGU Mainz for their inspiration and critical comments on my research project on language practices from Bakuli, Kampala. Anne Storch and Deborah Wockelmann are thanked for numerous critical suggestions. Moreover, my gratitude goes to Laura Seel for very valuable comments. Kieran Taylor is warmly thanked for correcting my English, and Monika Feinen for drawing the map of the neighborhood Bakuli. Two anonymous reviewers need to be thanked for their careful reading and valuable ideas to restructure and adapt a preliminary version of this paper. All remaining inconsistencies and mistakes are my own responsibility.
Nico Nassenstein 114 linguistic marketplace (2.1), followed by a focus on semiotic and language ideological processes of differentiation and hybridity (2.2), and then sketching the linguistic processes that take place (2.3).
2.1 Linguistic marketplaces: Fluid language in bars and at bus terminals In the past few decades, Bakuli turned into a transition space of quick encounters: The emergence of interregional Somali and Rwandan owned bus companies such as Jaguar, Trinity and Gateway contributed to the development of the neighborhood into a transit hub. After the establishment of bus terminals, small cafés began to open in the transit compounds, along with bars and guest houses in the near vicinity. In more recent years, the strip bar (or “strip pub”) Hannyz opened (see Map 1): It is mostly frequented by travelers and transit passengers, but also by businessmen passing through Bakuli for economic transactions as well as by refugees who have just arrived in Kampala. As the main bus trajectories connect Kigali (Rwanda), Bujumbura (Burundi), Goma (DR Congo), Kisoro (southeastern Uganda) with Kampala, and then Kampala with Nairobi (Kenya) and Dar es Salaam (Tanzania), a considerable number of travelers speak Kinyarwanda or Kirundi. Due to the daily bus connections and the increasing number of businesses that are oriented towards long-distance coach customers, Bakuli has turned into a “messy linguistic marketplace” (cf. Blommaert 2010: 28). Apart from the bus companies, gas stations as spaces of transit passengers, the numerous bars have adapted their menus to Rwandan and Burundian expectations. While most bars fry beef skewers outside, the inside bars offer a selection of mostly affordable Ugandan beer and also Rwandan and Burundian brands. The ambulant vendors who intend to sell their goods to beer-drinking customers, also speak either Kinyarwanda or Kirundi, or have acquired the basics of both, for instance in case they are proficient in related Western Ugandan Bantu languages such as Runyankore-Rukiga.7
7 This is based on the common perception that speakers from Western Uganda, in analogy with closely-related languages, also share common cultural traits, and originate from the same ancestors. This view is often shared among and about certain Banyankore (speakers of Runyankore) clans, especially in regard to certain Rwandans and Burundians. Therefore, speakers of the Western Ugandan languages Runyankore-Rukiga often feel that the slight attempt to speak Kinyarwanda or Kirundi would already contribute to a certain intimacy between vendor and customer (as also stated by E. Niragira, p.c., March 2018).
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Map 1. The neighborhood Bakuli in Kampala, Uganda
In this linguistic marketplace transactions occur in bars, within the compounds of bus terminals and at the entrance of the strip bar, creating what can be considered as a corridor of fluid language practices. In Bakuli, the dominant languages employed in business transactions and during travelers’ quick encounters, as well by motorcycle taximen, sex workers and strippers, are Kinyarwanda and Kirundi. This choice not to use Luganda, the most widespread Bantu language of the Ugandan capital and Buganda Kingdom, in Bakuli is strategic. Economic transactions, such as the trade of precious minerals including Coltan and diamonds, the negotiations of male customers and female sex workers, street vendors’ petty trade as well as larger transactions of cars or other merchandise are predominantly held in either of these two languages, or in a hybrid mixture with sentences creatively containing both Kinyarwanda and Kirundi and often also regional non-standard varieties. Unlike the focus on standard and “good” Kinyarwanda or Kirundi—after its textualization then implemented and used in schools as medium of instruction (for Kinyarwanda) and as taught subject (for Kirundi)— language use in Bakuli reveals far more non-standard realizations in terms of lexicon and morphosyntax than standardized language. Far from Rwanda and Burundi, speakers play with standard concepts of language and also with conscious “destandardization” in their interaction. Based on Appadurai’s (2000) concept of “grassroots globalization”, these large and rapidly increasing informal markets in bars, on the premises of bus companies and around (strip) bars are tightly bound to the broadening diffusion of specific dominant language practices—a concept introduced by Pennycook and Otsuji (2015: 11) as “globalization from below”:
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“An understanding of globalization from below typically involves a focus on market places and cities with large informal economies (Guangzhou, Mexico City, Kolkata, Cairo and São Paolo are typical examples; Mathews, 2012), but it also occurs in all those local markets and interactions across many smaller domains.” (Pennycook & Otsuji 2015: 11) In the informal economy of the Bakuli neighborhood, where semi-legal or illegal business transactions take place, language plays a salient role. Speakers require a high degree of awareness in order to conceal their origin, for the purpose of blending in or reducing suspicion about their background, and they assimilate their language in order to successfully conduct business and customer interactions. Burundian refugees may adapt their language in order to be perceived as long-time residents with Rwandan roots, while Rwandans may adapt their language in order to be seen as newly arrived asylum seekers from Burundi (and therefore suitable for refugee status). Congolese vendors may conceal their language in order to be perceived as Rwandan or Ugandan with the intention of blurring the actual place of origin of sold conflict minerals. Moreover, speakers play with stereotypes and employ mimicry in order to deconstruct clear national categorizations. First observations and recordings of Kinyarwanda and Kirundi speakers (along with their related varieties) reveal that language use appears fluid and easily adaptable all throughout the neighborhood. It is modified according to the speakers’ social needs, their conversational partners and whenever a specific in-group identity (to be “Rwandan” vs. being “Burundian”) in a bar or bus terminal is favorable. Bakuli as a creative linguistic marketplace thus has a clear pragmatic impact on passersby’s and passengers’ linguistic strategies in the area (see also Section 3). Figure 1 shows an aerial view of Bakuli (as seen from the neighboring Gaddafi Mosque).
Figure 1. Aerial view of the neighborhood Bakuli with its bus terminals (author’s photograph)
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2.2 Messy creativity, language ideology and indexicality A “messy creativity” (Jones 2018) occurs among speakers when they switch and choose between the different realizations of a dialect continuum. For reasons of concealment and contemporary mimicry, i.e. the appropriation of somebody else’s speech style, speakers “‘mess with’ our traditional ideas about language” (Jones 2018: 83), shift boundaries and recontextualize patterns of linguistic variation. While messy language has often been viewed as an outlying exception, and as a non-conformative, subversive practice, it should rather be seen as a ubiquitous and common phenomenon (instead of rigid language boundaries), as explained by Jones. He further observes that in the study of embedded and mixed languages, linguists do not acknowledge the spontaneous and creative language behavior of speakers with a broad repertoire. The studies mostly use “concepts that make that messiness seem neat” and “even the words we use to describe hybridity, such as code-mixing, and the more recent translanguaging, imply more or less orderly, deliberative processes” (Jones 2018: 83). In their influential book chapter on “disinventing” and reconstituting languages, Makoni and Pennycook (2007: 1) address the disparity between colonial language policies and speakers’ agentive language behavior, based on the assumption that “languages, conceptions of languageness and the metalanguages used to describe them are inventions”. They analyze the construction of languages with reference to the views on semiotic processes introduced by Irvine and Gal (2000), namely “erasure” (language practices made invisible on the basis of dominant language ideologies); “fractal recursivity” (shifting projections of differentiation onto another level); and “iconization” (social images linked to specific linguistic realizations). These processes also play a central role in the nationalist ideologies surrounding the distinctions between Rwandans vs. Burundians, or Kinyarwanda vs. Kirundi; all of which is subverted in Bakuli. Semiotic processes based on language ideologies come into play when speakers re- negotiate these emblems of nationhood and belonging. Although more fine-grained linguistic distinctions, such as dialectal differences of Kinyarwanda and Kirundi (see Nassenstein 2019), were long ago made invisible in the textualization of both languages (i.e. through a process of erasure), speakers in Bakuli continue to play with these “very local” linguistic emblematizations. In the case that a conversational partner is from Rwanda without any precise knowledge of southern Kirundi dialects, one could present him/herself intentionally as a Burundian from southern Burundi. Likewise, a Burundian may present him/herself as a northern Rwandan Ikirera speaker (a northern Kinyarwanda dialect spoken close to the Ugandan border) when (s)he notices that an interlocutor with Rwandan heritage has spent several decades in Kampala without being aware of the many dialectal differences in Rwanda (this situation was witnessed during a research stay in Bakuli in 2017).
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Fractal recursivity occurs when dialectal differences between these two standardized languages are transported onto another level, serving as social indexical8 for stereotypical images of the Rwandan vs. Burundian fixed nationalities (according to the colonial model of distinctive nations and models of nationhood). These stereotypical perceptions have large implications and do not provide any method of approach to an individual’s language which cannot be categorized as either Kinyarwanda or Kirundi. While Rwandans are often seen as a community with a long-lasting history in Uganda that is well-integrated into Ugandan society, they are also often perceived as “more traditional” than Ugandans, in various ways such as education and taboo topics in discourse. Rwandophone communities are often perceived as more tight-knit than Ugandan communities and intra- marriage rules are reportedly more prevalent and strict than elsewhere in Uganda. Burundians arguably judge Rwandans as stemming from a country of considerable economic stability and as being less affected by conflict migration than they are. Burundians are often stigmatized as refugees, described as being economically more challenged (due to the current crisis in Burundi). Furthermore, in terms of their group adhesion and speech behavior, they are seen as more open-minded and as less aware of linguistic taboos (such as topics around ethnicity) than Rwandans. These stereotypes are also sometimes consciously reproduced by speakers in interaction, when a specific representation appears as more favorable. Here, specific indices (i.e. linguistic signs) turn into markers of identity and national belonging, which then leads into fixed criteria of differentiation. For example, marking off refugees against elites, marginalized speakers against the socioeconomically privileged, prestigious positions of priests and politicians. In order to understand the “careers” of these changing parameters of human categorization, the theoretical frame also needs to be expanded (see Hirschauer 2017, among others). Iconization becomes prominent when specific linguistic forms begin to function as social indexicals and represent divergent identities. In Kinyarwanda and Kirundi, iconic forms can be observed; in phonemes such as the palatalization of velar plosives before i/e which occurs in Kinyarwanda but not in Kirundi (
8 Here, a reference to Silverstein’s (2003) model of indexicality and “indexical order” has to be provided, according to which in “first-order indexicality” variation is noticeable (and is linked to a specific sociodemographic context), and comes to be identified in “second-order indexicality” as markers of class and place motivated by group members of a specific community, and then as a “third-order indexicality” whereby linguistic markers become emblematic of a specific group or community, and also occur in stylization practices. Fore a general comparison of models of indexicality as suggested by Labov (1972) and Silverstein (2003), see Johnstone, Andrus and Danielson (2006).
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2.3 Some of the linguistic processes at work9 A first glimpse of speakers’ practices at bus terminals and in bars facilitates insights into an emergent hybrid register or “language-in-between”. Language boundaries between Standard Kinyarwanda and Kirundi become fuzzy and indistinct10—in contrast to the supposed distinct languages developed through colonial and missionary endeavors out of widespread dialects. However, the linguistic processes that occur remain unclear, although a preliminary analysis of the language use in Bakuli could provide an invaluable insight. The following entry in my field notebook may serve as an example of the creative “mixture” of Kinyarwanda-Kirundi as used by speakers around Bakuli’s bars and bus terminals, especially for strategic reasons, and as an example of customers’ constant practices of concealment, guessing (where the interlocutor in question may originate from) and their hypotheses about one’s trajectory:
29 March 2017 I am sitting with Eloi Niragira, my Burundian friend and contact, in a small corner bar in Kampala. A seemingly intoxicated customer nearby listens to our conversation, which is held in French with snippets in French and Kirundi. We talk about mixing languages as it happens frequently in the neighborhood Bakuli. In the meantime, I note down one example provided by Eloi, explained by him as “langage mélangé” as it would often be used in Bakuli:
(Kinyarwanda) bagaruka mu rúgo (Kirundi) barímó kugaruka i muhira (Hybrid register in Bakuli) ba-rí ku-garuka mu rúgo 3PL-be INF-return in house ‘they are returning home’
9 It is common practice to include linguistic examples, i.e. recorded sentences and excerpts of texts, in scholarly contributions that describe settings and processes of language contact. I do not analyze linguistic data in this paper (apart from one example extracted from a qualitative interview), as it is mainly based on ethnographic notes and participant observation, and thus experience-based and observation-based. The fine- grained linguistic analysis of the register used in this neighborhood of Kampala will therefore be discussed elsewhere at a later stage of the research project in Bakuli. 10 The verb become is chosen here as these artefactualization processes, especially the promotion of the Kinyarwanda dialect Nduga to the “standard language” and the neglect of other varieties (see Nassenstein 2019), actually had an impact on speakers’ language practices, shifting toward more standardized language also in less official or normative contexts; in more recent times also based on its implementation as “school Kinyarwanda”. In Burundi, this did not happen to the same extent.
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The man at the next table addresses Eloi and greets him with “Bite?”, answered by Eloi with the common greeting “Ni byiza.” They chat for a while, and I notice Eloi’s meaningful looks toward me. I ask him “So, he has spent a long time here?” “Yes, but he is from there” (he means Rwanda). He laughs. “Maybe he doesn’t make a difference between Kirundi and Kinyarwanda. He has spent a long time here, but he is from there. Actually, that’s the problem of many Rwandese who were born here in Uganda or raised here or who grew up here. If you have been here for 20 years, and you were 25 years old [when you came], you can’t make a difference between Kinyarwanda and Kirundi.” I ask Eloi:“So, even if they hear the language, they may think it’s the same?” “Yes, they think it [Kirundi] is Rwandese [i.e. Kinyarwanda].” A waiter brings Eloi a cold beer, but he complains that he actually wanted a warm one, in English. Eloi explains that the man had thought he would speak to a Munyarwanda, a Kinyarwanda-speaker, which Eloi as a Kirundi- speaker did not contest. Instead, he slightly changes his intonation and adapts his phonology, especially the emblematic lack of palatalization of velar stops in Kirundi11, as I notice, when replying to the man’s questions, and when asked where he was from he replies: “From a small village in southern Rwanda”. The man nods, continuing to sip his beer. I want to know why Eloi did not tell the truth and why he did not state that he was actually Burundian. He laughs and tells me that at times it would be simply a strategic move: As the man had no idea about Burundi and Kirundi, and already assumed that the language spoken by Eloi was Kinyarwanda, he played along. Who knows what this could still be useful for. “The old Rwandese, they would have known instantly that I am not Rwandan, the accent… but this one does not know anything.” Later on, when we speak French, the man comments again in his simplified Kinyarwanda: “Oh French, I no longer speak French. But I like the language. I forgot it. It’s one of the three languages of Rwanda”.
Apart from certain morphosyntactic adaptions (such as adapted TAM markers, modifications of negated sentences in terms of word-order, variation of noun class prefixes), the more salient processes of convergence that occur between speakers of the two languages concern lexical choices; due to the fact that speakers are often aware of the striking lexical differences. Barakana (1952: 72) concludes, in regard to the lexical divergence found in Standard Kinyarwanda and Kirundi, that “[a]u point de vue du vocabulaire, les différences sont plus notables. Des centaines de mots employés dans l'un des dialectes n’existent pas dans l'autre où y ont un sens totalement différent” [“in terms of the vocabulary, the differences are more striking. Hundreds of words used in one of the dialects do not exist in another one, or they have a completely different meaning”]. Knowing and using the lexicon of one’s conversational partner may be helpful in order to build trust and encourage a successful economic relationship. In first qualitative interviews, recorded in Bakuli, five Kinyarwanda speakers, four Kirundi speakers and
11 For the recognition value of this phonological process in Kinyarwanda-Kirundi, see for instance Nassenstein (2016: 67).
Pragmatics in Bakuli: A Linguistic Ethnographer’s Notes from the Neighborhood 121 two Congolese speakers (of closely-related varieties) indicated that, after their arrival in Kampala, they became very aware of the lexical differences between different dialects and would often employ specific lexemes for particular communicative purposes. This creative play with identities results in mimicry and concealment and is largely reliant on a high degree of awareness and knowledge of the other variety. On a phonological level, speakers adapt a different speech style in order to sound like their interlocutors, as postulated by Giles and Smith’s (1979) concept of “linguistic accommodation (theory)”, the speakers focus on “interpersonal accent convergence” and “the supposition that […] the prestigiousness of phonological variants could be supplanted by an interpretation in terms of interpersonal influence—the interviewee’s convergence with the interviewer” (Giles, Coupland & Coupland 1991: 5). The patterns of convergence found in Giles’ model, recurrently seen in interactions in Kampala, can be understood as linguistic negotiations of membership (to nations as “imagined groups”) and of in/exclusion, affecting both segmental and suprasegmental phonology. A Burundian speaker, who was interviewed in 2017, explained the difference between Rwandan and Burundian patterns and the degree to which each culture accommodates other influences. In contrast to Rwandans, who are more reluctant to use Kirundi realizations in interactions when not absolutely necessary, he emphasized that “a Burundian, he just goes to Rwanda for one week, then he can come back with a Rwandese accent” (D. N., interview 2017). He further explained that numerous Burundian refugees, especially at the peak of the contemporary conflict, would impersonate Congolese, Ugandans, or indeed often Rwandans, either in the quest for paperwork or as a communicative strategy when negotiating group and membership boundaries. A related phenomenon focusing on the modalities of in-group boundaries, which has been primarily subject to sociolinguistic analyses of adolescent groups, is Rampton’s phenomenon of “language crossing”. Crossing can be understood as a “code alternation by people who are not accepted members of the group associated with the second language that they are using (code switching into varieties that are not generally thought to belong to them)” (Rampton 1995: 485). This involves both the adoption of phonological realizations (“accents”) as well as the use of potentially emblematic, morphosyntactic forms and structures. In the present case, Rampton’s focus on “ethnicity” could arguably be substituted for a focus on (perceived belonging to) “nation/s”. Interestingly, in some cases the convergence of both languages was explained by speakers as a mere simplification intended to reduce misunderstandings and as a leveling of dialectal differences. A Congolese interlocutor with Rwandan roots explained this in an interview, as a reduction of linguistic differences in situations where the distinctive, separating features of each variety become arbitrary:
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On est dans ce business. C’est comme si, disons, quelqu‘un parlait de la manière la plus simple, la plus vite de communiquer, sans différence. Ils savent que ‘oui, si je parle autant, il ne va pas avoir le temps de rigoler, ou faire quoi’, son main idea est business. Et là vraiment il n‘y a plus une grande différence. Quand ils arrivent là, ils appellent ça ‘on devient comme une grande famille’, hano turi murugo in Kinyarwanda, here we are at home. Un Munyabwisha [Congo] va venir, un Hutu de Masisi [Congo] va venir, tu arrives à Bakuli, tu parles Kinyarwanda, tu arrives à Bakuli, tu parles Kirundi, tu sauras pas vraiment si on parle en fait ‘le Kinyarwanda’ ou ‘le Kirundi’. ‘You are in this business. It’s as if somebody spoke in the easiest manner, the fastest one to communicate in, without difference. They know that “yes, if speak like that, he won’t have the time to laugh, or what else”, his main idea is business. And then, really, there is no longer a big difference. When they arrive there, they call it “we are becoming something like a big family”, here we are at home in Kinyarwanda. A Munyabwisha [Congo] will come and pass by, a Hutu from Masisi [Congo] will come, you arrive at Bakuli and you speak Kinyarwanda, you arrive at Bakuli and you speak Kirundi; in the end you will not know whether we actually speak “Kinyarwanda” or “Kirundi”.’ (P.B.B., interview 2017)
This neutralization of the differences between the two closely-related languages can be approached with a major theoretical concept in language contact studies that emerged over the past decade: “translanguaging”. In contrast to the more established approaches, such as “code-switching” and “code-mixing” (see Eastman 1992; Myers-Scotton 1993; Gardner-Chloros 2009; for Kinyarwanda especially analyzed by Gafaranga 2007), translanguaging offers a more fluid understanding of the speakers’ repertoires, as a fluid semiosis (for speakers’ heterogenous practices in different spaces, see also Lüpke 2016; and as a critical contribution to newly emerging concepts Jaspers & Madsen 2018). Niyomugabo (2012), who investigated trilingual translanguaging, “Kinyafranglais”, among university students in Rwanda, observes the simultaneous use of English, French and Kinyarwanda, devoid of any clearly demarcated language boundaries. García and Wei (2014) stress that “[t]ranslanguaging does not refer to two separate languages nor to a synthesis of different language practices or to a hybrid mixture. Rather translanguaging refers to new language practices that make visible the complexity of language exchanges among people with different histories, and releases histories and understandings that had been buried within fixed language identities constrained by nation-states.” (García & Wei 2014: 21) Interestingly, the relativization of a “hybrid mixture” can be explained, according to García and Wei’s translanguaging model, through speakers no longer actively separating between fixed languages (“Kinyarwanda” vs. “Kirundi”), as is the case in the Bakuli neighborhood. Here, the language boundaries are no longer evident and speakers
Pragmatics in Bakuli: A Linguistic Ethnographer’s Notes from the Neighborhood 123 conceptualize both languages as one, to be dynamically used according to the needs and communicative prerequisites of the specific situation. This topic requires further profound investigation, especially through a focused analysis on translanguaging practices among Rwandan and Burundian speakers in the neighborhood of Bakuli.
3. Concluding remarks: The pragmatics of place, place-making and approaches The peculiarity of the Bakuli neighborhood lies in the contrast between an apparent fluidity of people, resources, goods, languages and encounters through space, bound to travelers, markets, buses and motorcycles, versus a fixed neighborhood characterized by language practices that rarely occur elsewhere in the Ugandan capital. This seemingly contradictory relationship, i.e. fluid and floating [trans]languaging practices vs. one place through which speakers move and where they interact in specific languages, has to be understood as the result of a complex place-making activity. While fluid language has indeed been recognized as the unmarked way of speaking in many African communities, only a few exemplary applications for specific urban/rural spaces exist (see Cobbinah et al. 2016, and others). In the present paper, this is tentatively discussed for Bakuli against the colonial demarcation of Kinyarwanda and Kirundi. Place-making strategies through speakers’ agency are in the center of various chapters in Cornips and De Rooij’s (2018a) volume The Sociolinguistics of Place and Belonging: Perspectives from the Margins. In their introduction, they state that “[p]lace-making involves the assigning, through interaction, of social meanings to (physical) space(s), thereby creating places that are perceived as the basis of belonging” (Cornips & De Rooij 2018a: 7–8). In the present case, the agency, based on which Kirundi and Kinyarwanda speakers assign social meaning to Bakuli, stands in clear contrast to place-making strategies during colonial times in the context of emergence of the two standardized Bantu languages Kinyarwanda and Kirundi (Nassenstein 2019) in the protectorates and later nation states of Rwanda and Burundi. While a specific language (e.g. “Kinyarwanda”) was assigned to an imagined national community and place (e.g. “Rwanda”), Bakuli functions differently: The lack of a clearly identifiable language turns the space around one of the oldest, colonial, neighborhoods into a place where postcolonial encounters between Rwandans and Burundians—and others—occur, and where the drawn boundaries (between imagined places/communities, see Anderson 1982) and people no longer work but are inverted, deconstructed and blurred, performed as a fluid register of transit zones. 12 All in all, the pragmatics of place in Bakuli thus appear as a very “decolonial practice” (see also Mignolo 2012). This resonates in Johnstone’s (2011, summarized by Cornips & De Rooij 2018b: 8) work, who argues that people have to re- imagine themselves locally. This happens in Bakuli through a fluid boundary-crossing of two very colonial languages, at least when these are understood as national or official languages and as indices of their speakers’ local origins, either as conscious self- localization or as ascribed associations of speakers with specific (colonial) places.
12 In order to theorize the link between register and place, the reader may be directed to Silverstein’s (2014) work on dialect eradication and linguistic authenticity. I am grateful to one of the reviewers for this useful and kind recommendation.
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Cornips and De Rooij (2018b: 8) further summarize that “[p]laces are intersubjectively produced but also subjectively and bodily experienced when one feels in contact with a place”. This occurs in Bakuli through substance, i.e. the consumption of cheap beer in the crowded Rwandan and Burundian bars and the roasted meat that is reminiscent of meat skewers in Kigali and Bujumbura but also through the very tangible experience of selling and buying conflict minerals, touching and checking the quality of shoes, clothes, and so on during business transactions. However, unlike other place-making strategies based on enregisterment (Agha 2003), i.e. when linguistic practices become associated with speakers and places, actually the opposite happens in Bakuli. Based on the hybrid register they employ, speakers are no longer easily associated with specific places of origin due to their fluid language use and due to their strategic play with these apparently demarcated languages. Postcolonial pragmatics, and specifically, a pragmatics of place, has to address this understudied relationship of speakers and place(-making): Which role does the postcolony of Uganda play in regard to the multilingual practices and encounters in neighborhoods such as Bakuli? Which impact does Bakuli as a specific place, with social meaning assigned by speakers in specific situations of concealment, play, deception and masquerade, have on speakers’ language practices and repertoires? When and how and in the context of which speech acts are very mobile speakers, passengers of transnational bus lines, motorcycle taximen, ambulant vendors etc., triggered to hybridize their languages as a newly emerging register and break the boundaries of “school” Kinyarwanda and Kirundi in Bakuli? When facing this endeavor, it may be practical to read through Lefebvre’s (1991) well- known study The Production of Space again and to apply it to a theoretical focus on a pragmatics of place. The study deals with the complex notions and different kinds of production of space, understanding space as a social product and social construction. In Lefebvre’s sense, Rwandan and Burundian migrants’ production of space in Bakuli, turned into a place by filling it with agency—based on linguistic fluidity, messiness, its use as a linguistic marketplace—would then turn against the hegemony and coloniality inscribed in the creation of former colonial entities such as Rwanda and Burundi, executed on the basis of colonial borders and production as “nations”. The creation of nations, national languages as colonial and missionary products and their indexicalities and impact on speakers not only produced space(s) but also were “a means of control, and hence of domination, of power” (Lefebvre 1991: 26). Encounters and business interactions in Bakuli help speakers to deal with this colonial legacy by stressing the dynamicity of languages, origins, trajectories through powerful emplacement practices, based on mimicry and other linguistic processes.
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